The NT Government is hoping the flights will help it meet and exceed a target of 30,000 visitors from China per year by 2020.

The potential benefit to the Northern Territory economy was estimated at $32 million each year — if the route reached three flights per week at 80 per cent capacity.

In August, Donghai Airlines added extra flights, running 13 inbound and outbound paths, but in September those numbers had dropped back to just eight each way.

The August flights were 30 per cent full inbound and 28 per cent full outbound.

The Northern Territory Government's last budget allocated $10 million for "cooperative marketing to support sustainable airline services", though it's not clear how much of that is associated with the Donghai flights.

"Donghai has been historically mostly a freight airline, not a passenger airline, and one of the major benefits is freight links into and out of the Territory by air for time-sensitive freight," he said.

"Perishable freight like seafood, fruit and vegetables and those sorts of things."

But Mr Parish said the NT Government had "over-egged the pudding" with the estimates of a visitor boom.

"We were never going to get [those] sort of numbers of Chinese tourists coming in at such short notice, I think," he said.

"As the CBD is revitalised with the Darwin Cities Deal, with the building of a major water theme park, the Landbridge Hotel, a range of other developments … I'm hoping and expecting that in two or three or four years time, Darwin will wake up again and be an exciting place to live and visit."